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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

The results suggest that around 9% of all armed conflicts over the past 30 years have occurred during – i.e. in the same month as – an extreme climatological event.

Taking all three disaster types together, the researchers only found a link when they added another factor – “ethnic fractionalisation” – into their analysis. This is a measure of how how ethnically diverse a country is.

The researchers find that in top-50 most fractionalised countries, around 23% of armed conflicts have occurred at the same time as a climate-related disaster of any kind.

Other studies of highly fractionalised countries have identified similar links, the paper notes. Prolonged droughts, for example, may have contributed to outbreaks of conflict in Somalia and the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

“We do not report evidence that climate disasters are directly triggering conflict outbreak, but rather that they may enhance the risk of an outbreak of a conflict rooting in context-specific circumstances.”

While more work is needed to establish exactly how disasters enhance the risk of conflicts, the findings suggest they add pressure to existing ethnic divides, says Schleussner:

“It seems…plausible that such disruptive events fuel smoldering social tensions.”

With extreme weather (pdf) likely to be more intense and frequent as global temperatures rise, the climate could be become a more prominent factor for conflict in the future, says Schleussner:

“Several of the world’s most conflict-prone regions – including North and Central Africa as well as Central Asia – are both exceptionally vulnerable to human-made global warming and characterised by deep ethnic divides.”

This means that a changing climate should be taken into account when developing security policies in these regions, Schleussner says.

No clear picture

The new study adds weight to the link between climate and conflict, says Dr Peter Gleick, an expert on water and conflict at the Pacific Institute, who wasn’t involved in the study. He tells Carbon Brief:

“This paper adds to the growing evidence that climate disruptions can be, and indeed have been, a contributing factor in violent conflicts in the recent past, especially in areas already vulnerable to ethnic, political, or economic disruption.”

But when researchers look at the entire world and all types of violence, there isn’t a clear picture, Randall tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s not possible to say that, universally, climate impacts will lead to more violence.”

For example, huge literature reviews of climate-conflict research, known as “meta-analyses”, have come to different conclusions. A 2013 study of 50 research papers found “consistent support” for a link between the climate and different types of conflict. Yet, another group of researchers disputed this finding, and concluded from their own assessment that the body of research “produced mixed and inconclusive results”.

Even a single climate-related disaster can have more than one impact on the risk of conflict. A study of the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan, for example, found the crime rate in the Philippines fell in the short-term, before increasing again later down the line. Randall explains:

“The researchers argue this is because of an increase in people helping each other through adversity. But then 12 months later the crime rate increases – probably as people find themselves in deeper poverty.”

However, despite some mixed results from the scientific literature, there is enough evidence to suggest that action to tackle climate change is needed to limit disasters becoming more extreme, Randall says:

“The fact that there is some evidence for climate impacts increasing conflict risk makes the case for [greenhouse gas] emissions reduction even more compelling.”

Ethnicity and history

It’s not just the role of climate in conflicts that needs careful interpretation, says Randall, so too does ethnicity:

“Although it’s true that, historically, many conflicts have erupted along ethnic and religious lines, it is also the case that ethnicity and religion are used and abused by political actors to create divisions within societies where they had not previously existed.”

In other words, it is not diversity itself that leads to violence, but the way that diversity is exploited for political ends, or where different ethnicities are not treated equally. In fact, research suggests that there is no clear link between diversity and conflict.

The study also leaves one question unexplored, says Prof Halvard Buhaug, research professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), who also wasn’t involved in the paper.

While the findings suggest that climate-related disasters and conflicts often happen around the same time, there could be a third factor affecting their occurrence, says Buhaug.

The authors point out that there might be a “hidden common cause” behind both, but they don’t go as far as suggesting what that cause could be. Buhaug suggests that a history of conflicts in a country or region would be a likely candidate. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We know that conflict begets conflict, and conflict also is development in reverse – destroying economic activity and material products – thereby increasing the likelihood that a given meteorological event (drought, heat wave, flood) reaches the required level of severity [to cause conflict].”

In other words, a more unstable country is less likely to be able to help its citizens in the aftermath of a disaster – for example, by providing food and clean water – raising the risk of further violence breaking out.

This highlights how important it is to prevent conflict in the first place, says Randall, as well as mitigating climate change:

“There is clearly a massive unmet need for conflict prevention and peacebuilding, and studies like this make that even more important.”

I think its easy enough to see that droughts and heat waves can exacerbate tensions and become a factor in conflicts. Of course in times of trouble like large floods, humans sometimes do indeed pull together, but you do also sometimes get looting, and the army sometimes has to maintain order. Containing the conflict becomes expensive.

I seem to recall Hurricane Katrina had looting and violence. Climate change could mean more events on the scale of this hurricane.

And as the article says, instability within a country caused by climate change or other events, means even smaller weather events become a problem. It's these hidden or less obvious costs of climate change that add up, and this is being missed by the media in their search for simple sound bites.

One can find many multiple instances of environmental degradation that was an instigator of conficts or war, particularly agricultural degradation and including deforestation, etc.. In fact one could say it is the norm, not the exception. Why would AGW, whose major component is environmental degradation, be any different?

RedBaron@4. Your comment "Why would AGW, whose major component is environmental degradation, be any different?" seems to fly in the face of the many reports noting the increased greening and decreased browning of the planet due to the effects of CO2.

Haze @5 . More greening [leaf area] in recent decades is evident from the satellite images. This is good for herbivores and livestock. However, higher average temperatures, storms, and heat-waves have a deleterious effect on maize, rice and wheat crops (but especially the maize). Overall crop yields decline . . . and greater extension of croplands is needed.

Arguably, that produces an environmental degradation - it depends on what definition is used !

What you are refering to is called CO2 fertilization, a stabilizing feedback. This stabilizing feedback, all else equal, should be large enough to counter emissions, given a healthy environment. But the environment is not healthy, and this stabilizing feedback is far too small to counteract fossil fuel emissions. Second factor often neglected is that leaves are not all created equal. While C4 plants (mostly grasses) represent only 3 % of species, they represent a disproportionately large % by more than an order of magnitude of photosynthesis due to higher efficiency. They also do better at lower atmospheric CO2 levels. Those same grasses while temporarily fixing more CO2 also have a mature phase with highly increased albedo. (amber waves of grain?) And the 4th factor is instead of producing a woody trunk, c4 grasses put 30% or more of those increased products of photosynthesis directly into the soil in what is called the "liquid carbon pathway". Not only is a higher rate of carbon fixed, but a much higher % is directed into the stable carbon pool as opposed to the labile carbon pool. This "greening" is actually part of a transition to lower efficiency plant species in some areas and part of the long slow process of desertification in some areas as well. (less soil carbon holds less water in the soil to hold plants over through a drought)

So while you can claim that "seems to fly in the face" if you wish, but digging deeper into the highly nuanced interactions actually brings a different result.

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